


angels pouring out of the farmland

by Jack_R



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-04-22 00:45:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14297103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jack_R/pseuds/Jack_R
Summary: Ryan dies vomiting blood somewhere in Oklahoma, his eyes wide and terrified while Shane turns the room upside down, frantically searching for the hex bag.---The one when Ryan dies and Shane makes a deal to bring him back.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

 

I.

 

Ryan dies vomiting blood somewhere in Oklahoma, his eyes wide and terrified while Shane turns the room upside down, frantically searching for the hex bag, goddamnit, it has to be here  _somewhere_ -

He finds it, in the end, a tiny sack with rabbit bones, canine teeth, and dried snakeroot, but when he turns around, Ryan is collapsed on the floor, awfully still and pale and blood pooling underneath his body, and there isn't a sound to be heard, not even the awful gurgling of him choking his own insides out, and something grabs Shane's stomach and squeezes it as he lunges towards him.

"Ryan, come on, Jesus fucking Christ, ýou're going to make it," he chants as he searches with his shaking hand for a lighter he's carrying in his pocket, and when he takes it out, it slips from his sweaty palm and hits the ground, the sound of it too loud and dull. He grabs it, but it's covered in blood, Jesus Christ,  _Ryan's blood,_ Ryan's blood is staining his hands and clothes as he grapples with it, the hex bag still in his other hand, and the lighter hiccups, once, twice, before it finally spits out a lick of flame, and Shane brings it to the hex bag and watches it catch on fire, quickly devouring the shriveled remains, and he breathes out, and then again, and again, and holds it until the blue flame licks his palm and even then he keeps holding it, until it gets too much and he has to drop it, but then he reaches out and shakes Ryan's body, so terribly still and quiet-

"Come on, you dick, get up, I got rid of it, you have to get up," but Ryan's still not moving, and the hex bag's already burned to a crisp, so why is he- no, this isn't happening, Ryan's going to wake up any second now, coughing and wheezing, but alive-

But the only thing he can hear is his own heavy breathing and the wind blowing outside.

A second goes by, then another. Shane feels something warm and wet soaking into his clothes, and his hands are slick when he grabs Ryan, his nails digging into the other's neck, and Ryan's skin feels burning hot, so how come he's still not moving, and then he hears a choked sob and only after another second realise that it's his own, and there's something warm pooling in his eyes, but Ryan isn't - he's not - he can't-

They're alone in an abandoned house somewhere in middle of Oklahoma, wind howling outside in the cornfields, and Shane pulls Ryan's body closer and buries his head into the crook of his neck, the scent of Ryan's cologne overpowering the smell of salt, smoke, and warm blood, and he chokes on it, and then again, and again.

 

\---

 

"Shane Madej," purrs the demon. "Lovely to see you this evening."

Shane's standing tall, trying not to shiver - his skin feels wet and sticky, and Ryan's - body - is lying in his trunk, cradled in several blankets but still going cold each passing second. He's filthy: covered in streaks of drying blood and the dirt still clinging to his palms from when he's dug a hole in the earth, almost tearing off a nail, and the sack itself is buried haphazardly, part of the cloth still sticking out of the soil. But there are rules: and if you bury a black cat's bone, yarrow and graveyard dirt in the middle of a crossroads, you get to make a deal.

The demon's wearing a young man who - if you squint -  _almost_  looks like Ryan, but not quite, and it makes Shane angry somewhere deep inside: he's already decided, after all, and this changes nothing, but  _god_ , he hates demons.

"I want a deal," he states. The words feel heavy on his lips, and he shivers as he feels the wind rising.

The demon laughs, the sound of it cold and sharp.

"Well, look at that," it says. "I've never thought I'd hear you say that. What happened, Madej?"

Shane grits his teeth: and he doesn't answer.

The demon looks past Shane, his gaze landing on the car he left parked several feet past the crossroads: and it breathes it, its nostrils widening as he takes in the sight.

" _Oh_ ," it breathes out, its mouth opening in a smug smile. "I see."

"Bring him back," Shane says after a few seconds of silence. 

"Certainly!" it says. "That will be no - problem - at - all." 

And then it licks its lips.

"One year," it says.

"What?" says Shane, automatically. "No."

It tilts his head, pursing its mouth.

"Well then," it says. "Then I'm afraid there's no deal."

Shane breathes in, and then out, and looks at the demon. It's the middle of the night and he should be sending this thing back to hell and not making a fucking deal with it, but Ryan's still dead because of  _him_  - 

"Everyone gets ten years," he states. "Why not me?"

The demon straight up laughs at him.

"Shane Madej," it says when its catches it breath, theatrically brushing away nonexistent tears. "You are not  _everyone_." It narrows its eyes and stalks closer. "You, my dear friend," and it reaches out with his hand, as if to touch him, and Shane catches it by the wrist and holds it suspended in the mid-movement, "have been making troubles ever since you've first heard the word 'demon'."

"See," it hisses and pushes back, inhumanly strong, "when someone sends so many of us back as you did, you don't get ten years. You don't even get five, or three." Shane's hand finally gives in, letting the thing go, and it touches his face, running its fingers across his cheek. " _You_ ," and it smiles again, "get one year. One year with your little friend back there, and  _then_ ," and it scratches him, "you go straight to hell with me." 

Shane feels his cheek burning where the thing scratches him. He waits, and then the thing finally lets him go and steps away.

"So?" it says, cheerfully. "Do we have a deal?"

Shane touches his face with one hand: and it's so hot to touch.

"He won't remember what happened," he says instead. "And the witch - the one who left the hex bag there, you know who I mean," and the demon shrugs, "she's going to die. The same way he did."

The demon theatrically sighs.

"You drive a tough bargain, hunter," it says, and then it grins. "But! Fine."

And Shane breathes out, and lets his hand fall down, and he almost turns, but-

"Whoa, slow down, cowboy," the demon says. "I believe I'm owed something."

Shane glowers.

"What's up with the frown, baby boy?" it says. "You've just agreed to sell me your soul. One little kiss to seal the deal is hardly anything compared to that!"

And Shane knows that, there are rules, and they have to be kept, but this - the demon wearing a skin that's so similar to Ryan and yet completely wrong, and he's giving up his soul, so why can't he keep this one thing to himself and someone else, but -

A deal is a deal.

It  _devours_  Shane - he holds his mouth stubbornly close, but the thing bites down on his lips until he feels his skin breaking, and when his mouth moves in a silent gasp, the demon takes it as an invitation and slides in, turning the kiss open-mouthed and filthy. His mouth quickly fills with his own blood, and the demon laps it up like he's starving, and when he finally pulls away, the sound of their mouths parting is so wet and loud it makes his stomach turn.

"Hm," it says, and its eyes are very red, "tasty."

Shane draws in a loud, shaky breath, and accidentally swallows some, the spit tasting like rust and sulphur and dead things, and he feels like he's going to vomit, because god - he still had Ryan's blood on himself, and the ashes from the burned hex bag, and fucking _graveyard dirt_  - and he curls up his hand until his own nails are digging into his skin and he feels himself hurting.

Somewhere in the distance, a thunder rumbles.

 

\---

 

When Shane was eight years old, his daddy gave him a shotgun and told him to shoot anything that didn't look human.

"What were you thinking," his mom screamed later, "he's _a child_ , he can't shoot, he could have hurt himself," but his dad raised his hands up in the air and said, "Jesus Christ, I know, but what was I supposed to do?! They were coming for me, and I couldn't - I didn't have anything else on me, so fucking _sue me_  for wanting our son not to get gutted by a pack of godamn werewolves!", and then his mom threw a brass teapot after his dad, promising that she'd personally gut  _him_ if he ever did such thing again.

That night, Shane learned that werewolves - and ghosts and vampires and demons,  _all of it_  - were real, and that his parents were hunting them.

"It's been in our family for ages," his dad said, mom still glaring daggers at him, "both mine and your ma's, maybe even before we came to the continent. We didn't - plan on telling you until you got older, but since the cat's out of the bag already," and his mom huffed, "we might as well start now, if you want."

He did.

"We call ourselves hunters," his mom said when she first took him to a practice range, "but you're not going to be hunting anything as long you live under my roof. And before I'm letting you even touch that trigger, you are learning how to take this thing apart and back again with your eyes closed."

It turned out he was a pretty shit shot - just like your dad, his mom rolled her eyes when he missed the can for the fifth time in a row - and having to pour over the old grimoires reading about various creatures and their weaknesses always made him groan in frustration, but he was determined to learn. He remembered vividly standing there in the dark, barefoot, the shotgun unbearably heavy in his hands, as he heard howling and screaming in the distance - and he remembered being afraid, because it was  _coming for him,_ and he was absolutely, utterly helpless in his too-short pajama.

They took him for his first salt-and-burn five years later. Shane was thirteen years old and already taller than his middle school teacher, Latin sitting comfortably on his tongue and the shotgun a familiar weight in his hands, and when he poured gasoline over the bones of a restless spirit and set them on fire, his dad clasped his shoulder and they watched them burn together.

"Good job, kiddo," said his mom on the ride back home. "I guess we'll make a hunter out of you yet."

 

\---

 

Ryan wakes up screaming.

There is something -  _crawling inside of him, Jesus fucking Christ, it's crawling out of his throat -_ and he screams, something sharp and small clawing at him from the inside and -

"Ryan, god, Ryan, what - are you okay - " and that's Shane's voice and Ryan opens his eyes to the darkness of their hotel room, his throat raw and sore, but the feeling's suddenly gone and he blinks in surprise and stops screaming.

There's some noise as Shane searches for a lightswitch, and then the room's flooded with yellow light of the lamp, and Ryan blinks again, and there's Shane, rising from one of the armchairs, and what the fuck, he looks awful - his clothes are a mess, covered in filth and wait a minute - 

"- is that blood?" he manages to say in a raspy voice, and Shane's eyes briefly flit away to his disgusting, filthy clothes - and wow, he does smell awful, even from the distance, like he's crawled through the drain and then rolled some in the dirt. 

"What?" Shane says. "No. Christ, are you okay?" and he sounds genuinely worried.

Ryan pauses for a moment and looks down.

He's - lying in a hotel room bed, apparently, in one of his t-shirts and sweatpants (huh - he usually doesn't wear those to bed), and he feels like he just got run over by a truck. That awful feeling has disappeared, thank god, but his throat feels dry as fuck - possibly from the screaming - and everything is hurting, his lungs, his chest, even his  _fingertips,_ and even though he's clean, he feels dirty.

"Yeah," he says, after a few seconds. "I just feel like I died and crawled back from hell."

Shane - well, he looks like he tried to smile and got stroke somewhere in the middle of it.

"Shane - what the fuck, man?" Ryan says, and his eyes slip to the clock showing few minutes after three in the morning. "Weren't we supposed to be at the site right now?"

"No?" Shane says slowly. "The owner decided not to let us in after all, so. No demons this lovely evening. You were devastated."

Ryan snorts, involuntarily.

And  _god_ , Shane looks  _awful -_ not only he's filthy and smells, but he looks like he just wake up somewhere in the ditch - his eyes are bloodshot and tired, hair sticking out to all directions, and there's a scratch on his face, and his knuckles are bruised, leaving him strangely vulnerable in a way that his tall body usually doesn't allow for.

"What  _happened to you_?" he breathes out.

Shane looks down on his own body, and then smiles bashfully.

"Yeah - well, I guess you've had too much, no wonder you don't remember," he says. "Man, that's honestly for the better, we did some stupid shit."

"...What did you do, Shane," he says flatly.

"I - might have gotten into a fight? Hey," he says when he sees Ryan frowning. "You should have seen the other guy. Oh wait - you did."

"Fuck off, I don't remember," Ryan says and collapses back on the bed. "This is one brutal hangover, man. I have no idea what happened."

Shane's quiet for a second.

"Yeah," he says. "I can see that."

And even though he still looks terrible, Ryan can see the barest hint of a smile on his face. 

"You're a damn weirdo," he huffs, looking at the ceiling. "Oh, but you smell  _terrible_ , get away from me," he adds when Shane winks at him. "Get in the shower, or else you're sleeping in the corridor."

"Well, I'm so sorry to offer your tender sensibilities, mister Bergara," Shane says mockingly. "By the way, that scream?  _Very_  manly."

"Shower. Now," Ryan demands and throws a pillow after him. "Out."

Shane mockingly salutes.

"Ay-ay, captain!" he says in one of those ridiculous voices of his, and then turns away and walks to the bathroom.

Ryan lies in his bed, listening as the water starts, the humming of it steading his still racing heart, and then when it stops and Shane walks back into the room and into his own bed, he turns off the light - but only after Shane's breathing settles into a steady rhytm, he closes his eyes and falls asleep.

He dreams of drowning.

 

11:30:20:47:2

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 II.

 

The water washes it all away.

Shane's standing in the shower, leaning on the wall as he watches the water pool under his feet, dark and filthy. His body is aching, and the cut on his cheek's still burning - and he should get some salt and alcohol and rub it in until it's bright red and painfully clean, but. Well.

He's still going to die.

And it feels fucking awful to even think about it, that this - him, breathing, feeling _, being_  - will be gone in a year, goodbye cruel world and hello darkness my old friend, but he remembers Ryan ( _Ryan_ , drawing in that first shocked breath, as if he was drowning and Shane pulled him from under the water), and that he'll still be there, warm and solid and  _good,_ even after Shane's fucked off to whatever hellhole people like him go when their time runs out, and not rotting in the earth with the worms, and he feels slightly less miserable.

And of course he doesn't want to be  _dead -_ Christ, he's seen some shit and he knows it's not just some angels and harphs when you finally kick the bucket, okay - but he signed up for this shit, he got the memo and everything, 'hunters don't die of old age' and all that jazz, while Ryan  _didn't,_ Ryan has no fucking idea what's waiting out there just outside of your view, and when he walked into that damn house, he thought he'll see a fucking ghost at worst, and not dies trying to vomit his own insides out. Ryan's a damned civvie, not a hunter, and has no idea that Shane's not tagging along just for shit and giggles, but because hunting things is what he does, what he's been trained to do ever since his dad shoved that shotgun into his hands, and if Shane shat the bed on this one with the hex bag, he should be the one biting the bullet and not  _Ryan,_ who  _doesn't know_.

So here's what's going to happen: he'll suck it up and put on a happy face like the godamn liar he is, and he'll get on with his job until his time runs out. Shit, he was always going to die young - the only difference is that now he knows the date. 

And as for Ryan - well.

He'll keep him safe.

 

 

\---

 

 

"Dead Woman's Crossing," Ryan says.

Shane huffs.

"Well, that sounds charming."

"It's a ghost bridge, not a - fucking holiday resort, Shane! What do you think it should be called? The Sunshine Creek?"

"All am saying," says Shane, raising his hands in defence, "is that they could have picked up a more subtle way of saying 'hey, folks, we think there's a ghost'!"

"I haven't said anything about ghosts yet."

"Well, is there going to be a ghost, Ryan?"

"...yes."

"..."

"It could have been a demon!"

"No offense, but you'd be way more freaked out if there was a demon."

And Ryan blows up like a puff fish, ready to shoot back some dumb insult - and there are sitting there together, lights shining blindingly into their faces and cameras running, and Shane is suddenly struck by how - fragile this moment is. They are both okay, there's nothing to be afraid of (Shane checked - there used to be a ghost back in the seventies, but someone else took care of it a long time ago.) There's just the river and an old bridge, and the dark sky above them.

He wonders if there is a sky, in the place he's going to - when it's time.

"...Shane?"

"What?" he says, and oh, Ryan's looking at him strangely.

"You kinda zoomed out a bit there, buddy," he says and gestures to the cameras to stop shooting. Shane reaches with his hand to run the fingers through his own hair, awkwardly.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm still a bit tired, y'know. Didn't get much sleep."

"Yeah, you look like shit," Ryan says plainly and Shane snorts.

If he had  _any idea_. (But he does not, Ryan doesn't remember the iron nails in his throat and blood vessels bursting in his eyes, and will never remember it, because that happened to a dead man and Ryan's alive, Ryan's breathing and shivering a bit from the cold, and Shane thinks about letting him borrow his jacket, but he left it in the car, because it's the middle of the August and fucking Oklahoma of all places, so he thought he'd do fine without it, but obviously Ryan's not doing that great and-)

"Look who's talking," he says instead.

Ryan squints at him, and Shane suddenly becomes aware of the scratch on his face, the bruises and the split lip, and smiles in an attempt to lighten the situation.

"...oh, wow. You look even worse than before." 

"Don't knock it till you've tried it!" Shane exclaims cheerfully.

"That doesn't even make sense!" Ryan says, eyebrows scruffed in something between confusion and exasperation, and Shane laughs.

 

 

\---

 

 

So that's the thing about Shane: he's been keeping something from Ryan.

And Shane thinks he doesn't know, Shane with his cheerful bullshit and the dumbest smile Ryan's ever seen, Shane thinks he's some kind of a mastermind, hiding things behind Ryan's back, but joke's on him, because Ryan's not a fucking idiot, okay, there's more to him than ghosts and being a reasonably wary human being, and Shane should really know better by now.

Take the morning after that demon fiasco, for example - Shane's been acting weird the entire time, looking like he got mangled by a band of baboons, and Ryan caught him going through the footage when he left him in the room alone - and he looked up, his stupid face looking weirdly guilty, and Ryan had no idea why, so he asked him, what's up, and Shane was all ooh- and aahhs- and nothing, Ryan, nothing at all, just reviewing the footage, so he said, okay, didn't you say though, that we didn't get any, that they didn't let us any, and Shane said, yeah, that's right, just looking if we can salvage anything, chill, so he asked, can we, then?, and he just shrugged and left it there.

But that's not the weirdest thing, see, because when Ryan went through it - because like hell he was going to leave it alone, Shane was being shifty as fuck - there was nothing from that night. Not a single fucking file, not even the car ride stuff they usually do, and when he asked Shane about it, he was all, I must have accidentally deleted it, sorry, Ryan, now where we are going next, and that's a fucking deflection if Ryan's ever seen one.

And look, Ryan's not the raving lunatic Shane something tries to paint him as, okay, he's smart and knows his shit, and when he says Shane's acting weird, it's the truth, and when he says there's something off about that whole trip, he's right, and - he doesn't usually go for this dream stuff, okay, but he's been dreaming about drowning for three days in a row now, and he always wakes up gasping, his throat raw just like the first time, and that's just - 

He feels strange, okay, this whole thing seems sketchy as fuck, drowning or not, and sometimes when he looks in the mirror, he swears - there's something just outside his point of view, and it sounds crazy, but he  _feels_  it watching him, and sometimes he just spaces out, straight up into the zone like he's on something, and he thinks he hears something, "ge - u - ge - u," like some sort of a deranged chant, and maybe he's just stressed, maybe he's just tired and fucked up from going all around the country looking for these nightmares of places, but the footage is missing - and when he thinks about it, Shane's a fucking madman, but sometimes, when they are doing an episode and he thinks Ryan's asleep, he gets up and goes - somewhere, he doesn't know where, and he figured it was just insomnia or - a need for a midnight taco, something inane like that - but it's fucking weird when he thinks about it, and that one time, he tried to take Shane's bag, and it was  _heavy_ , you would have thought he was carrying stones or bricks around, but when he asked him about it, he said it was just books, but Shane's not that bookish, and he lifted that thing like it weighted nothing-

There's something off about this whole thing, Ryan knows, and he doesn't like it one bit.

 

 

\---

 

 

"Hey, Katie! How's it hanging? I heard you like to whisper at people at your bridge, maybe grab their hair a bit? Would you mind doing a bit of your thing now, so we can put it up on the In - ter - net?"

"She's a fucking ghost from nineteen'o'five, Shane, she's not going to know what the godamn  _Internet_  is."

"That's why I said it so slow,  _Ryan._ "

"And how is that supposed to help?"

"Well, she isn't dumb! Are you calling the ghost dumb, Ryan? I think you are!"

"No, no, that's not what I said!"

"Heard that, Katie? Ryan's calling you dumb! I think you should push him  _down the bridge_."

"No, what the fuck, Shane, are you trying to get me killed-"

"He disrespected you! Better follow him home and  _haunt him,_  that will teach him!"

"Shut the fuck up-"

"Why, Ryan, are you afraid of poor ol' Katie-"

"-FUCK!"

"What?"

"SOMETHING FUCKING TOUCHED ME, OH MY GOD, THAT'S IT, I AM GOING TO DIE IN GODAMN OKLAHOMA, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT-"

(and Shane's breath stops, because he-)

(it's-)

(-)

"...that's a branch"

Ryan looks around, flailing his arms wildly.

"That's a branch, Ryan."

"Shut up."

"No, look, it's a branch! Leaves and all that. Spooky."

Ryan looks at it, his eyes skipping from the branch back to Shane's face and then again to the branch.

"One day, I will murder you, and they will never find the body," he says flatly.

"Well, I'm not about to lecture you about committing the perfect crime or anything, but you have to admit that it is a bit thoughtless to announce your plans while. On camera."

"..."

"Next up on the new episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved: True Crime - the not-so-mysterious murder of your beloved host, Shane Madej!"

"Stop testing me."

 

 

\---

 

 

Ryan's watching him.

He thinks he's being smart about it, all short glances and furtive excuses, but like fuck he's fooling Shane, because if there's one thing he knows about, it's bullshit, and Ryan's full of it. And look, he knows he fucked up - with the camera, okay, but he panicked when he saw Ryan coming back into the room, because he spent the past few minutes watching the image of a floor where the camera landed, the sounds of Ryan choking in the background terribly loud - and he heard himself, panickedly going through the room, searching for that fucking hexbag while his best friend was dying on the wooden floorboards, and god, it was even worse the other time around, knowing that he just wouldn't find it in time, and Ryan getting more and more and quiet, until he stopped choking - and the thump -

And then Ryan was walking in, tanned and freshly showered, and he freaked out, and pressed delete, and fucking wiped the whole device, and then he fumbled it up like an idiot, and now's Ryan eyeing him suspiciously when he thinks he's not looking, so good fucking job, Madej, your mom would have had you write down the exorcism in Aramaic thousand times over for that, but what's done is done, and he's gotta live with it.

For a year, anyway. That's exactly how much he left. But a year's still enough time to screw this up, to slip up in front of Ryan, and he's not doing that, okay, Ryan would murder him for keeping that from him - and stop talking to him, probably, and who could blame him, because he's been knowingly dragging him around to life-or-death situations - or, worst of all, he would ask Shane to teach him how to be a hunter, because Ryan's earnest like that and doesn't know what's good for him, and hunters  _don't die of the old age_ , his dad went under in Indiana after a vampire hunt gone wrong, and his granpa went to get a demon and never came back, and Shane's getting dragged to hell in a year, and he's not having Ryan keep him company there, he fucking sold his own soul to the actual devil to keep him alive and safe, so as long as Shane's breathing, that's not happening - and, god, he would have to  _tell Ryan_  about Oklahoma - and - yeah, not opening this can of worm, thank you very much.

So let Ryan watch him. Shane's a godamn professional, and he's been playing this game for  _years_  now. He's not about to slip in the final stretch.

 

 

\---

 

 

"Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"Are you fucking with me, Shane - that was a voice, okay, a woman's voice -"

"Oh, you mean the owl."

"...that was  _no_  owl."

"Sure was."

"It said 'Lulu'! Like the baby! Katie's baby!"

"Naw."

"Lu - Lu, Shane. Loud and clear."

"Hoo - hooh. Like an owl. Because it was one."

"Shh!"

"What?"

"Shut up!"

"Christ - okay -"

Silence. A few leaves rustle.

"Now you scared the owl away, Ryan. No Hogwarts letter for you."

"What - no! I bet there even aren't any owls in Oklahoma, you dick!"

"... I can't believe you are more willing to say that they are ghosts in Oklahoma than a  _bird_."

 

 

\---

 

 

They wrap up the investigation shortly after three in the morning - Ryan decides there's enough footage, and plus they have heard something that was definitely a coyote, and ghosts or no ghosts, Ryan's not about the let himself be mangled by a pack of wild animals, so that's a wrap.

They drive back to their hotel, the dirt road making for a bumpy ride, so they don't talk - none of them particularly want to end up in a ditch because Ryan got distracted by something stupid Shane said, so it's radio silence and eyes on the road for them this lovely evening. Shane's staring into his phone, his face illuminated by the blue light looking uncharacteristically tired - and Ryan should really keep his eyes off him and focus on driving, okay, why is that even a problem he has, anyway - and fuck, he should really talk to Shane about the Oklahoma thing, because it's the middle of the night and Shane's less likely to bullshit him when he's this tired - 

But for some reason that feels unfair, Ryan jumping him when he's feeling sort of crap, and that shouldn't matter, but Shane's just a guy and has his own shit to deal with, and maybe he's just being weird about it, maybe Shane's acting weird because of something he did, Ryan makes questionable decisions when he's drunk, and there's the thing - oh god, he hopes he didn't pull any of that on Shane that night, Jesus, that would be awkward - he's straight, this is just - some weird fixation, okay, when you spend so much time with one person, no wonder you start thinking about things you wouldn't otherwise consider, and he's fucking going crazy, he just needs a fucking break - 

Something moves in the door mirror, so quick that it makes Ryan question if that's even happening. His eyes are tired - hell, he's tired, and the road's terrible, and Shane's falling asleep in the front seat. He looks strangely soft, and Ryan wonders what it would feel like to touch his hair.

 

 

11:26:20:04:00

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are most definitely owls in Oklahoma.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

**III.**

 

 

 

"I was starting to think you were avoiding me."

Shane's on the crossroads again - and his hands are dripping with something sticky and dark, the inky liquid sluggishly dripping down into the dirt. It smells like hot asphalt and tar, and it's pooling under his feet, black and slowly seeping into his shoes, and when he tries to move, he finds he can't - he's stuck there, almost like the flies his nan used to catch onto papers with syrup, and when he looks up, the moon is terribly pale and too close.

Shane turns his head to look around - and freezes.

"Oh, come on, Madej. There's no point playing coy when you already had my tongue down your throat," the - thing - says, perched on the hood of a car wreck, and it - winks.

Except it  _didn't,_ because it had no eyes - or maybe it did, maybe all of it was eyes, because it keept moving, wriggling and jerking in broken movements, like you gave someone a mangled puppet and they didn't know what to do with it, so they were just pulling at random strings, and not only it didn't work, parts of it were absolutely broken, it could not work - but they still kept trying, and that thing kept moving, parts of it sticking out at weird angles and twitching, and on the top of that puppet was made by someone who had only vague idea of what puppets were supposed to look like in the first place, so it was vaguely human-shaped, but by far too slender and tall, and maybe there were some extra appendages in that, but Shane couldn't tell, because it was still  _moving,_ blinking and rolling like waves on the open sea, and there were those clicking and snapping noises, but strangely wet, because the whole thing was covered with - or made of? - some gummy, dark liquid and oh God _are those teeth_  - 

"Bet they don't teach you about this in the hunter school," it says, mockingly.

And Shane's still trapped in the place, dripping with the -  same inky liquid, Jesus Christ, it was precisely the same thing, all over his palms, sticking to his hands like glue, and when he breathes in, he can smell it rotting, warm and wet in his throat, and the thing's still watching him with so many eyes, and he's-

"What's the matter, baby?" it says, with feigned ignorance. "Are you perhaps... scared of me?"

And Shane tries to answer, but his lips are stuck together, and he's afraid that if he opens his mouth, the liquid will come crawling into his mouth and inside, devouring him from the inside-

"Oh," it says. "And here I thought we were becoming great friends."

It slides off the car hood - or maybe it jumps off, or crumbles down, it's hard to say when Shane's pretty sure there aren't verbs that would describe the monstrous way in which it is moving, and it blinks again.

"Well, no worries!" it exclaims cheerfully. "We have almost a full year to become - intimately - acquainted. See, dear," it skips closer, "this lovely thing," and reaches out with something sharp and clawed, tapping his chest, "that's mine now. Sure, I can't take it yet," and it sounds almost mournful as it slides the - nail? - across its chest, "but I'm very, very good at waiting. And even if I can't touch it, I can - look," and Shane hisses as he feels his skin breaking under the claw. 

"It's funny, isn't it? You carry all your fancy sigils, tattoos and spells to keep us out, but all it takes now," it says, almost in wonder, "is for you to fall asleep," and it digs in, right under his ribcage, reaching for something there, and Shane opens his mouth to scream, "and I can come in."

And then it smiles.

 

\----

 

"Shane, what the fuck - Shane - God - SHANE," and that's Ryan, one hand on Shane's chest and the other holding him by his wrist, and his eyes are open wide and absolutely frantic, and Shane stops struggling, chasing his breath and -

They are parked before the hotel, and the car's engine is humming steadily and in the soft light of the nearby lamp, Ryan seems almost ethereally pale - and Shane's wet, he's sweating like he's just run a marathon and his heart is racing, and his hand is still taunt and outstretched towards Ryan, so he allows it to fall and shivers.

"You - fell asleep," Ryan says, unsure, letting go of Shane and falling back to his seat. "And then you started - twitching, and sort of sweating, and when I tried to wake you up, you wouldn't - and then your hand just went - "  _straight for my throat_ , he thinks, and stops talking.

And Shane's silent, he's looking at his own hands like he's never seen them before, and when he looks up at Ryan, his eyes are somehow - distant. Like he's not even there.

"Sorry," he says, then, in a flat voice. "Wouldn't wanna spook you."

The words hang in there, absurdly toneless in contrast to the way Shane's looking, and Ryan shivers.

"...Are you okay?" he asks, acutely aware of how meaningless it is, when Shane's clearly  _not okay_ , what the actual fuck was even that, who tries to pull that when they are asleep-

"Yeah," Shane says. "Absolutely."

He runs his hand through his own hair, not looking at Ryan.

"Let's just get inside," he says after a few seconds and reaches out for the car door. "I'm - tired."

And like  _hell he is_ , Ryan thinks, he's seen Shane tired and he's never gone full Suffolk Strangler on him before, so he leans forward and catches Shane by his shoulder.

"Hey," he says, and Shane freezes. "If there's anything," and god, he feels like a high school counselor, that's how cheesy that is, "anything at all, you know you can tell me, right?"

Shane's still turned to him, and for a moment Ryan's not sure whether he's not just going to walk out on him, but then it passes and Shane lets his body relax and fall back into the seat.

"Yeah," he says, and it's soft, more than Ryan's used to, "don't worry about it, okay? I swear," and he chuckles, "this wandering around the country, sleeping on a dusty floor in a different murder house each week - I'm getting too old for that, Ryan."

"Oh c'mon," Ryan says, "you aren't that much older than I am, you big baby. It's not like you are turning fifty or something."

And Shane falls silent again, and then he finally turns around so they are face to face - and he really looks old, Ryan thinks, the flickering light creating deep shadows on his face until it almost looks like someone much older and much more tired than the Shane Ryan knows. 

"I guess not," he says, quietly, and then he smiles.

It's almost painful to watch.

 

\---

 

The next day, they go back to L.A.

It's a good day, sunny and warm, but not nearly as hot as Oklahoma can get in August, and the road's wide and empty before them. Ryan puts on some old-school rock, Creedence Clearwater Revival and a bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Fogerty singing about the Mississippi River with the sort of nostalgia that only comes through thirty years after you record the song, and Shane's leaning back with his eyes closed, the sun shining straight into his face, occasionally tapping his fingers to the rhythm.

And - it's good. It really is.

It's really the easy comfort of it, what gets him. How ridiculously  _mundane_ it is, Ryan humming along to the song blasting out of his phone when just yesterday, Shane saw a - demon and it was absolutely fucking horrifying, a nightmarish mess of things that shouldn't fit together in that way, and he's hoping that maybe if he stares into the sun for long enough time, it will burn that image of his eyelids. There are things he shouldn't know, that he's never wanted to have - and it's one thing to pick up a gun and go into the world, hoping to do something good and make it a better place, and another thing entirely to sit beside his friend in a car seat and know exactly how heavy his body is, because he had to drag it into his trunk, smearing the 1998 upholstery with thick, dark blood.

He tries, okay, he fucking tries really hard to keep it together, but every time he looks at Ryan, he remembers exactly how his face looked after he vomited good four liters of blood onto the floor and that if anything happens - anything at all, okay, he's not even talking ghosts or demons at this point, Ryan could walk into a bus tomorrow and there it goes - he can't do  _shit_. How the hell is he supposed to take care of him, if he can't even close his eyes without getting close and personal with fucking Freddie Krueger himself - fuck, and he's already freaking Ryan out, he knows that weird little gaze and it's no good, and no fucking wonder, because now he's apparently graduated from sketchily deleting their footage to attempted murder _while asleep,_ and what the actual hell was that, Madej?

It's a godamn wonder Ryan hasn't gone running for the hills yet - no, he goes all 'show me on this doll where the bad man hurt you' and it's so fucking ridiculous and sad at the same time, Shane's having a hard time figuring out what has he ever done to deserve this good - no, scratch that,  _fucking fantastic -_ man give a single shit about him. And it's not like he's being all sappy here, no - he literally got Ryan killed, practically pulled his head under and held him there till he stopped struggling, because that's what he does to people, he fucks them up with his sad excuse for a life and he should really know better by now.

Ryan's hand is steady on the steering wheel, and when he catches Shane staring at him, he raises one eyebrow. Shane attempts a smile, for his sake: and then he reaches out for the phone, turning the volume up.

_"Someone told me long ago_  
_There's a calm before the storm_  
_I know it's been comin' for some time."_

_\---_

When Shane cancels on him the next Monday, Ryan doesn't think much of it.

Life's busy back in L.A.: it's a stark contrast to that strange limbo they live in when they shoot the show, all too long evenings and dust falling down onto their bodies in slow motion, because this is the West Coast, this is as close to living on a sped-up film as anyone can get, and even if you'd like to believe in ghosts - and Ryan does - it's hard to imagine them being here, walking in their heavy, layered clothes through a world filled with glass, touchscreens and concrete. It makes him nostalgic, in a way: longing for a world he didn't quite live in, where things took time and mattered not because of what they were, but because of what they meant.

Shane would laugh at him, of course: he'd say, alright, Ryan, do you want to go and have a jolly good time waving at a ship for half an hour?, because he's a sort of a dick and doesn't get it: that Ryan's in love with a time that never existed, and maybe he looks for it in those deserted places where clocks don't quite tick as they should. 

So Shane cancels on him, shoots him a message that says,  _hey man, sorry, can't make it_ , and Ryan doesn't wonder, because that's the way things are in this world, plans change and people have to do the same. He doesn't think about the way Shane was in Oklahoma, because that - his thoughts - seems suddenly ridiculous in the harsh sunlight of the Californian sun, like he was high or in a zone, and suddenly the fog cleared and he's still left grasping for something that wasn't there. That's what these places do to him, they make him paranoid and itching, jumping at the slightest breeze, and when he's sitting at his desk and trying to formulate what he thinks he saw, he realises how dumb it is, 'I think I saw something watching me, and it wasn't human,' and "Shane deleted a bit of our footage, this means there's something wrong with him", when all of these things have rational explanations and fuck, he sounds like Shane right now.

They sit next to each other in the office, Shane typing down something that's probably the latest installment of his stupid hot dog story, and Ryan going through the EVP's, and then they record the voiceovers and Shane's just every bit as smug as usual, so he figures out everything's fine, and he goes out with some of his other friends, because  _he has those_ , and has an absolute blast and everything's great, until it isn't.

 

\---

 

Shane was raised a traditionalist, and it stuck.

He soaks his fingertips in a lamb's blood and paints the Seal of Solomon on his chest, chanting dead words in Aramaic that sting his tongue with barely-contained powers. There are kids these days who wander around without decent knowledge of the old rites, talking about the  _intent_ and the  _center_ and shit, and some of them aren't dead yet, so maybe there's something about it, but Shane trust in good, solid things like salt, iron and sage, because they ground him in a way any wishy-washy talk about the power of will can't. He's not a fucking Stephen Hawking of hunting, he doesn't really know why these things work and never asked why, so thank you very much, but he'll stick to what he knows and leaves all that esoteric bullshit to someone else.

So he goes and gets a jar of lamb's blood from a butcher who doesn't even look at him twice, because this is fucking Los Angeles and everyone's crazy, and god, Shane loves that city so much, and then he spreads plastic wrap on the floor of his apartment, because he's planning on getting his frankly obscene deposit back and blood is a  _bitch_  to get from hard-wood panelling, and paints himself with symbols older than this whole damn country, reciting strange words from old manuscripts spread around him.

He falls asleep with the devil's sign on his breast, and wakes up gasping for his breath, because that thing laughed at him and then ripped out his tongue, and the lamb's blood feels crusty and disgusting so he has to take a shower to  _wash it off_  and spends the rest of the night sitting in there, staring into nothing at all.

The next day, he walks into the office, exchanges a few jokes with Ryan, goes to a short meeting and contributes his bit, writes something about the hot dogs, which is usually a highlight of his day, looks over parts of the footages and makes appropriately sceptical noises, and then goes home and buys several pounds of salt, which he proceeds to strew all over the entrances to his apartment, around his bed and then, for good measure, on his naked body. 

He wakes up a few hours later, still convinced there's a hand in his throat, reaching for s _omething inside of him,_  and accidentally breathes in some of the salt, which turns out to be fucking unpleasant, especially if you are still struggling not to choke on air.

He burns a good cup of sage the next day, switching to old Irish chants for good measure, which turn out to be exactly as useless as Aramaic. So do Devil's Traps, iron, a fuckton of crystals that he didn't believe in in the first place, and a fucking  _bath in holy water_.

This means that when he goes to sleep on the eight evening armed with nothing but growing desperation, he doesn't actually expect it to work.

 

\---

 

" _Hello_ , Shane," it says.

Shane looks up - and his arms are black and dripping, and he feels his heart beating desperately, and it's there, it's just as horrific as any other night, and he's shaking because he knows what's coming.

"Have you finally given up?" it says. "I've gotta say, I expected you to last a bit longer before succumbing to resignation. I mean, eight days is kind of - a letdown. Are you sure you don't want to try something else? Consecrated ground's always a favourite, from my experience."

"It won't work," Shane says.

It's the first he's said in his entire time here, and it stopss the thing in its tracks.

"Oh?" it says, almost cautiously. "Why do you think is that?"

Shane breathes out and looks straight at it, and he's going to fucking vomit, it smells so bad and it won't stop twitching, God-

"I've been trying - to protect my body," he says, instead. "But - you aren't actually entering it, are you? You said you can come in, but if you could, the salt and everything - it would work. And you said that you can't touch me, so."

The thing measures him with so many eyes, and says nothing.

"This means - this isn't an actual possession or anything of that kind." Shane continues, encouraged by the silence. "I fall asleep: and I come here, whatever this place is," and he looks around, the deserted crossroads and the too-big moon. 

It's still silent.

"This is - a neutral ground, let's say," he continues. "It's not real, but it isn't - not real. It's somewhere in between, I suppose," and he smiles, bitterly. "Just like me, now."

The thing smiles: or, at least, what passes for its smile.

" _Very good_ ," it says. "And what does that mean for you, Madej?"

"It means - it forces you to reveal what you really are. That's why you look - like this," he says, and it giggles in a high tone, completely unsuited to those long, lean limbs and too dark teeth. "And I'm," he looks back at himself, the black liquid still covering his arms and dripping dripping down, always dripping, "tainted. Because I sold my soul to you."

And then he breathes in and looks back at the thing.

"But it also means - I can get rid of you."

It stops, the ebbing flow of its mass stilling, and it twitches - just a little, as if it was nervous.

"Can you?" it says, after a few seconds.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus omnis satanica potestas," says Shane and even when the thing starts howling, he doesn't stop.

 

\---

 

On Tuesday, he goes to work and pretends everything is fine. He picks up Ryan after work and they go grab a beer, talk a bit, and it almost feels like nothing has happened. Ryan's radiant in the dim lighting of the bar, and then he says something extremely dumb, and something shifts in Shane's stomach and he thinks, oh.

That has been coming for quite some time, hasn't it.

On Wednesday, he hands in his two-weeks notice.

 

 

11:16:14:07:29

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

IV.

 

 

"What do you mean, 'quit'?" Ryan repeats, his stomach sinking.

"Damn, Ryan, what could I possibly mean? He just quit! Walked in like it was nothing out of the ordinary, 'hi bossman, how are you this fine day, I'm quitting, my leave should cover the next two weeks, good-fucking-bye and have a lovely Wednesday!,' and left!," Matt says.

He's standing in his boss' office, still carrying the USB with the latest episode of Unsolved in his hand like a fucking idiot, and it's absolutely surreal, how everything is seemingly in its place and yet nothing makes any sense.

"Are you sure he didn't say anything to you?" Matt stresses, leaning over the desk. "Anything at all?"

"No!" Ryan says. "We were out just yesterday and everything was fine! Look, I know Shane, okay, I would have noticed if there was something up with him!"

 "Well, clearly you don't know him that well, do you," says Matt, and  _ouch_ , "since you don't just quit your job out of a sudden if there's nothing going on with you!"

He swipes one hand over his face a takes a deep breath, and Ryan's suddenly aware of how well voices carry in open-space offices like this one.

"Listen," Matt says after a second. "I don't know what's going on with you or Shane, but right now, I need you to get out of my office,  _call him_  and find out what the fuck he thinks he's doing. The new season isn't even finished, how are we supposed to replace him -"

"Yeah," Ryan says quickly because he doesn't want to hear that, he doesn't want to think about a future where he has to sit down and finish Unsolved without Shane, why would he even-, "yeah, I'll do that. I know."

Matt eyes him a bit suspiciously, but then lets him go with a wave of his hand, sitting down heavily in his chair, and Ryan turns around and leaves. Each one of his steps feels strange, like he's walking in a shitty slow motion or something, and when he walks back to his desks, he thinks he can feel everyone staring at him, poor ol' Ryan Bergara who just got dumped by the co-host of his own show and possibly his best friend, and why the fuck wouldn't they, might as well take a picture and post about it on Twitter, because that's what his life is, made ready for public consumption - now available for streaming on your devices, ladies and gents, so tune in to see the newest installment in this fucked up soap opera. He sits down at his desk, suddenly wishing there was a barrier between him and the rest of the office - at least a thin one, made from paper or something very light that would hide him here, but that's the thing with his job, it makes him feel like exposed like a lab rat somewhere, harsh lights shining straight at him and cameras rolling every single minute: no place for something as soft and intimate as privacy.

He dials Shane's number and waits.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

And then -

"You have reached the voicemail of Shane Madej. Please, leave your message after the tone-"

Ryan hangs up.

 

\---

 

He calls him again, of course.

He texts him, and then calls, and then texts again, and even leaves a voicemail like this is 2005, 'Hi Shane, this is Ryan, could you please get back to me as soon as you can, thanks,' yadda yadda yadda, and he keeps telling himself it's just coincidence Shane's not picking up, he probably left his phone somewhere and can't find it, there's no way he'd just ignore Ryan, but then an hour goes by and then another another, and suddenly it's two days later and Shane still didn't call.

 

\---

 

"Hi," Ryan says, a bit awkwardly, "I am looking for Shane, Shane Madej?"

The landlady eyes him a bit suspiciously, and Ryan feels like a stranger inside a puppet show, everyone's dolled up and ready for the big night and here he is, not knowing the script and blundering his way through his lines. It's like a bad detective show, him showing up here in his casual clothes - too casual for this, something inside him whispers, should have worn a suit jacket at least, you don't show up wearing shorts to a funeral - and asking for a man who might as well be a stranger now.

"Why?" the lady says finally, and she's short, squinting up at him, "Has he done anything? Who are you?"

And god, he half expects her to ask him whether he's a cop, like it's a cheap set on Lifetime and Shane's a gang member in hiding after a drug deal gone wrong or something ridiculous like that, straight out of one of those stories he likes to tell, with too many dead bodies to seem real. He coughs a bit, staring at his own hands instead to buy himself some time, before he looks up.

"Ah - no, I'm just - " a friend, I think, I used to think so?, "a collegue, from work. Shane hasn't shown up in a few days. I was worried."

She still doesn't trust him, but at least she loosens up a bit, stops looking like she's ready to slam the door at him any second.

"Well, mister - "

"Bergara," he offers. "Ryan Bergara."

"Mister Bergara," she says, in a manner that makes him feel like a kid in front of his teacher's desk, hands folded and all, "I'm not sure I can help you. He doesn't live here anymore."

"What?" he says, and something slips under him.

"I said he doesn't live here anymore - he moved out on Thursday, I think? He didn't give me a notice early enough, but I let him break his lease because he said he'd leave the furniture in there and furnished apartments are better to lend, you know." She frowns. "He wasn't a bad tenant. I wouldn't have guessed that he'd be the sort to just leave without a notice."

"Did - did he say why?" Ryan says, and his breath is short, too short, "Where he was going?"

"Why - well. You know, I don't think he did. Had a way to talk a lot without saying anything, that one."

And that was Shane alright, wasn't it, always yammering on about something inane, but when it came to actually telling people things, he's a slippery little son of a bitch - 

"Is there something else I can help you with," the lady says, and it really isn't a question, it's a 'please leave the premises right now if there's nothing else' wrapped in a sheet of silk, so Ryan ahs and no-thank-you-have-a-nice-day-s himself out of the door, and just as it shuts close behind him, he finds that he can't catch his breath, and it all seems fucking surreal - the white walls of the corridor, the conversation he'd just had slowly drifting away, his hands, unsteady - 

He hears a soft giggle, coming somewhere from upstairs. He doesn't pay it any attention: he has to keep his eyes on the floor, watching his steps, or else-

 

\---

 

 

 ---

 

 

_Something's wrong._

Or maybe not, maybe he just finally lost it and gone off the bend, poor ol' Ryan Bergara never was right in the head, was he?, always going on about the ghosts and whatnot, it's no wonder really-

And they don't think he knows, they don't know he can hear them talking, all furtive glances and false sympathy, and they are getting closer, like flies buzzing over the roadkill, 'hi Ryan, sorry to hear about the thing with Shane, do you know what' going to happen to Unsolved yet,' because that show's money-making machine and damn if they all aren't eager to hop onto the empty seat Shane left behind-

He's not making sense, is he, but fuck if anything makes any sense now, like he's the fucking Alice behind a godamn mirror and he didn't even choose to chase the white rabbit so that's great, that's fantastic, but why the hell he can't keep it together-

It's not just Shane, but oh, Shane's at the heart of it, isn't he, the fucking pièce de résistance, and it shouldn't be this way, people go, people leave you, and sometimes they don't goodbye, and of course it's a shock, Ryan lost -

\- 'your hair looks dumb,' but Shane's laughing and they are watching Frasier in a hotel room somewhere far away from home, Shane's hair is all fucked-up and messy and he's still buzzed up, it's coming up to five am and someone still living it up outside but they stumbled into their room ten minutes ago and they shouldn't be awake in the first place, but what the hell, they can sleep when they're dead - 

\- in a car, they are driving to downtown LA and the sun's high up in the sky and blazing, and Shane's humming along to the music, and they've known each other for three months now, so everything about their friendship is still strangely new, exciting but fragile and Ryan's still trying to find where the boundaries start and when they end, but Shane has a stupid smile and he thinks this might just work out -

\- sitting in an empty Walmart parking lot and Shane looks like he's about to cry but he won't tell Ryan why, 'it's nothing' and 'my mothership left the Earth so I can never go back home', and he doesn't know what to do, he's so shit at this, and the only thing he does it talk, he talks about being empty and how he sometimes still wonders what's the point, and Shane doesn't say much, but they sit there together, watch the sky and wait for the stars, and somehow, that's enough -

\- a friend, a good friend, maybe the best one he's ever had, and boy, does it sting, but he could deal, but there's something more, there's something going on here, and listen, Ryan's jumpy even when he's doing well and he gets that he's hardly the most trustworthy one to go and say this, but he fucking knows what he's seen - and there's something - 

\- breathe -

\- breathe breathe breathe -

_watching him._

 

\---

 

It starts like this _(or maybe not) (maybe it starts with things moving just out of his view, dreams about drowning and quiet laughter)_. 

Ryan's watching some of the footage they filmed for that season of Unsolved, trying to figure out _what to do,_ because Shane's gone and not returning his phone calls and it's been  _a week_ already and Matt's moved from denial to full-on bargaining, trying to salvage what he can from the wreckage that's their show, but Ryan's not sure whether he even wants to continue - because Unsolved's him and Shane and it feels ludicrous thinking about finishing this season without him. Maybe he'll just leave it as it is, a broken  body of a thing that never got to be, a sort of homage to what he ended up with - a blank space where someone else should be.

So there's the footage, from a haunted mansion somewhere in Ohio - and that one was sort of a letdown, Ryan remembers, even the spirit box failing to produce anything remotely close to evidence, and Shane laughed at him when he mentioned the sightings of a rolling head of some decapitated woman and made a fairly grotesque joke about playing football - and they are standing on the porch and looking towards the bridge where a man supposedly hung himself, and the camera pans in closer - 

and he sees _him_.

He bangs his knee on the desk as he almost jumps out of his chair, and something between a curse and a yelp escapes his throat, but he's scrambling for the mouse and he finally hits pause and the video stops on the last frame, and he blinks and lean closer -

\- and it's there, a soft silhouette of a body hanging from the bridge, gently swaying in the wind.

Ryan's breath hitches, and he rewinds it and watches it again and again, and it's no fucking trick, it's a bluish shape of a corpse suspended from the fucking bridge, blurred but strangely luminescent in the moonlight, there's no mistaking it, and how could they have fucking missed it, it's right there, and he turns around to holler at Shane who's -

not there. Right,

But there's a ghost on the fucking camera, there's a ghost, no one can argue it's a branch or gust of wind or anything like that, and God, he needs to breathe right now, he just needs to keep breathing, because this is so fucking huge, he can't - 

"TJ!" He shouts, not caring about how insane he must seem right now, eyes wide and sweating like he's just run a marathon, "come see!"

And TJ drifts closer on his swivel chair, eyeing him cynically.

"Look at this, man, look," and he rewinds back and watches TJ's face - 

"...Yeah?" the man says, absolutely blank.

"What do you mean, 'yeah', have you seen _that_ -"

"What?" TJ says, and frowns. "The bridge's cool, I guess."

"What - not the bridge, you asshole, look -" and he looks at the footage and goes a bit back - 

and there's nothing there.

Ryan stares at the screen, uncomprehending.

"...Ryan?" TJ says, after a few seconds. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah - I mean, sorry - " but there was a ghost, he saw it, he _saw it_ - 

TJ watches him like a man might observe a caged animal - carefully, with something like concern in his eyes.

 

 

\---

11:05 pm August 28th, 2016

 

> " _Something really weird happened to me at work today._ " An indistiguistable noice in the background. _"Shit._ " Silence.  _"It's_   _\- well, I guess I should be really sleeping more, you know? You'd say that, I think. Ryan, go the fuck to sleep, you are sleep deprived,_ " a laugh. " _You might be right._ " Silence. _"God, Shane, I wish you'd be here. Just - shoot me a text if you can, you know? Let me know you are alright. You don't even have to talk to me if you don't want to. I'd - understand."_

**next**

 10:36 pm August 30th, 2016

 

> " _Was it me? Shane, did I do something? I mean, I wouldn't think so - not everything's about me, I know, okay - but if that was about your family or some emergency, you wouldn't just ghost me, would you? I-"_ Silence. _""God, what am I doing? Fuck-"_

**next**

 11:42 pm August 30th, 2016

 

> _""For the record, even if you did leave because of me - and I'm still leaning towards the witness protection or something like that - I think I'd deserve to know. Even if I did something wrong._ " Silence. A sound beeping in the background. " _God - I have to take this - but especially if I did something wrong, you should have told me. I wanted to say that._ "

**next**

04:07 pm September 1st, 2016

 

> " _Shane, not that I think you are getting these messages anymore, but fuck you.  I mean - just. Fuck you. You piece of shit. I swear, if I saw you now, I'd punch you right in your fucking teeth._
> 
>  

**delete voicemails?**

**y**

 

 

 

 

10:29:06:08

**Author's Note:**

> I'm loosely borrowing from Supernatural lore about hunters, ghost and demons, but there's no need to know the show - I am ignoring the vast majority of it anyway.
> 
> Find me at @liviadeservedbetter.
> 
> Feedback is, as always, appreciated!


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